This is what I know about support. I know how to support a football team. I know how to support an argument with evidence. I know how to support a shelf with a bracket. What I'm less sure of is how to support my wife when she's going through a tough time.

It seems so easy when, say, I listen to The Archers. The supporting characters say things such as "Don't worry, I'm sure it will be OK." They make cups of tea and they sigh and they offer hugs and listen sympathetically, while the character in crisis responds gratefully. Real-life crises are more complex.

Whenever I notice that my wife is in need of support – and I can't always tell – I find myself sliding into The Archers paradigm. It is inadequate. All I do is – at best – annoy her and, at worst, infuriate her. I say the wrong thing. I do the wrong thing. More frequently still, I don't do the thing that I might have done, the thing my wife wants me to do – whatever it is, which I can rarely work out.

How can one do better? The problem with support is partly one of a paucity of imagination. Sadness, depression, being under intense stress, going through a life change – these are intensely solitary experiences. What one really hopes for is to be known and understood while going through these traumas. But such crises of the soul are difficult to penetrate. It takes an unusual amount of not just sympathy, but also empathy, to find the way through, to imagine your way into the same place.

I think my wife and I both – she has to deal with my occasional but disabling depressions – tend to look towards friends as an alternative source of consolation when in crisis. Women, particularly, often have strong support networks outwith coupledom.

A conversation with friends is baggage-free. When you're seeking sympathy from your partner, it is easy to get caught in the trip wires you have set yourself in a relationship. If you say, "I feel lonely and unsupported", it is easy for the other person to say, stiffly, "Well, I'm doing my best!" to which the response must be, "It's not all about you!" And there lies the slippery slope.

Within a relationship, attempts at support can easily be couched in terms of the success and failure of a particular marital skill, and thus comes loaded with the expectation and the potential for praise and blame. This makes it tough going, for each attempt to ease the burden of the other becomes a sort of competition, or task.

This can be counter-productive. One resolution of this dynamic is to stop trying. I admit that when my attempts to console my wife are rebuffed – perhaps because of clumsiness on my part – I find it harder and harder to continue.

For what lies behind the bland phrase "having a bit of a hard time" – often code for something much more serious – is the harder prospect of the failure of words or deeds to reach sadness, to heal it, to touch it. And thus within it lies less of an opportunity for intimacy than the potential for alienation. It is hard to help one another, when the pain lies beyond words or actions.

One must keep trying. But it takes courage, imagination, determination and an unusual degree of emotional intelligence. I wish I had more of any one of those qualities than I possess – so that I could learn to comfort others in the way the soap operas so deceitfully promise is natural and easy. For it is not a zero sum game. To console another is to console yourself. For that to happen the giver has to know how to give.

However – and this is the forgotten part – the receiver also has to know how, and be willing to, receive.